Mary Adkins: Weaving the Tapestry of Motherhood with Writing and Resilience

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Hello, today I have with me Mary Adkins.

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Mary is the mother of one, a writing coach, a podcast host and the founder of the book Incubator, a 12-month program to write, revise and pitch your novel or memoir.

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She is the author of the novels when you Read this, privilege and Palm Beach.

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Her books have been published in 13 countries and her essays and reporting have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic Slate and More.

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A graduate of Yale Law School in Duke University, she helps aspiring authors finish their books with joy and clarity.

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Mary, welcome and thank you for joining me.

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Yeah, I'm so glad to be here.

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Thanks, kelly, me too, I'm so glad, especially after I read.

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When you Read this.

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I'm so excited to be able to interview you A little bit of a fan.

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So I can't wait to read your other books, but today we're here to talk about your birth story and your fertility journey and how you have figured out how to balance motherhood and career, and it sounds like you're teaching other moms and other people to do that, so I'm just really excited to hear all of it.

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Yeah, me too.

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I love talking about this stuff so ready to dive in.

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All right, let's do it.

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So you have one son.

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Tell me about how that came about.

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I mean, I think we all know how it came about.

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Well, I don't know.

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There's like one of two ways.

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Right, yes, I have a five year old son named Finn, and he was born in New York in 2018.

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And we I was 35.

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I was three weeks from turning 36 when he was born.

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My husband and I we had gotten married when I was 33, two years earlier, and we met in New York.

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We met online on OK Cupid, which was like the dating site that people were still on back then.

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I don't even know if it still exists, but we had.

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We got married in 2015.

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And we had spent a couple of years, you know, being a couple and it was great.

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And I just remember not really having the itch to have a baby until suddenly I did Like I actually remember when it hit me, I was in the gym and on the treadmill in our in our Queens neighborhood and I was like I want to have a baby now.

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I think it was.

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I saw a commercial or something and I just got the baby fever.

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So when I told him, like I'm ready to start trying, he's like oh gosh, oh gosh.

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He was my husband.

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When I met him, he was a professional vocalist and a voice teacher and he, at this point, was transitioning into medicine.

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Actually, like in his mid 30s.

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He wanted to go to medical school, so he and he had a start over from scratch with college for to take sciences, science pre-rex.

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So he was a full time student and was catering at night and I was like trying to make it as a writer and tutoring.

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So life was not easy.

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We did not have a lot of money, so for him, the idea of having a child was really terrifying and I'm not going to say like lie, I mean it like scared me a little bit too, but I think it.

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I was just more of the attitude of like look, we're going to figure this out, everybody figures it out, we will also figure it out.

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I remember telling him, like look, I'm in my mid 30s, like this may take us a while.

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It's like, okay, well, it's going to take us a while, let's start.

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Then, of course, when you say that it did not take a while, we got pregnant the first cycle and the pregnancy stuck and was relatively seamless.

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I mean, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes at 20 weeks and so needed to manage that, but did manage that and then, ultimately, was induced up in Manhattan in April, the beginning of April 2018.

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And we had our son, and, apart from the fact that at that hospital, at least at the time, your partner had to go home because you were assigned a roommate after birth and then you would stay in the room with the roommate, which that was a little traumatic for me.

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I'm not going to lie, I was not prepared for that and I think if I had known what childbirth was actually like and what the wake of it was like, I we would have found a way to pay the I don't know at the time you could pay like $1,000 a night to have a private room, which sounded absolutely insane to me.

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Like that number.

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I was like we don't have that kind of money, no.

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But in retrospect I'm like, oh, that was really hard to be alone after giving birth with my baby, not having slept and having to basically stay up all night because my roommate, who also had just had a baby, would get up and feed her baby whenever I was trying to go to sleep.

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It was.

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It was terrible and I understand there are space issues, but I I feel like now I'm an advocate against this Like I think it's absolutely horrible to do this to new mothers.

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It's really terrible to do to people.

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So that was actually kind of traumatic, but not for any reason other than I was forced to have a roommate and my husband had to leave and then came in the next morning at eight o'clock with with our really close friend, and they had gone out for drinks the night before and had a full night's sleep.

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I don't blame them.

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I would have done the same thing if I got to leave, but I didn't, you know.

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So, yeah, I mean, that was really the birth story.

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I mean, I think just to get like a little deeper here and I'm sure many of your guests have versions of this but I did feel like I went into the hospital one person and, like, walked out of the hospital a different person and I.

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I do distinctly remember this feeling that morning when my husband his name is Lucas and our friend Wes came in carrying a Starbucks for me that I had asked him to bring and we wheeled the baby Finn down to the like visitors room so that they and we were like they're holding him and passing him around.

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I remember this feeling of like, of it just feeling so surreal that everyone was acting like I had not just gone through this Absolutely.

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I keep wanting to use the word traumatizing, but I don't know if that's the right word, but like my body, I still was just bleeding profusely.

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I was just in the wake of having given birth and it was almost like an elephant in the room that no one was talking about.

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Like I just became people.

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I'm like why are people just treating me like this didn't just happen to my body, like I don't know what I expected them to do?

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Maybe just ask like, how are you doing?

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Maybe that was it, but act like you had a medical procedure or like I had a medical procedure.

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Yes, right.

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And while I want to advocate for birth as a natural phenomenon and not a medical procedure, it is a complete metamorphosis of your body and there is trauma that is inflicted on your body parts, regardless of what manner you gave birth.

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And.

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I just I agree.

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I think that oftentimes what you see is just everybody's paying attention to the baby and nobody's paying attention to the mom.

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The mom, yes, and I think part of the surreal thing is that if I even had a cold, people would be like how are you doing, how are you feeling?

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And this felt so much more dramatic than that.

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It's like I have a gaping hole in my body right now.

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I have undergone this, like you said, this massive transformation.

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The fact that no one is kind of checking in just felt so odd, because all the attention was on the baby, and that was one moment where I felt like, wow, I've never experienced anything quite like this.

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Yeah, it is really, really odd and I think we can definitely do better as a society when it comes to checking in on moms, but also I understand that it's kind of awkward because of what just happened.

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What do you say sometimes?

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I?

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Think people struggle with that especially if it was your husband and his friend Right, Then he's probably like I don't want to ask about that.

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Yeah, they're two men and they don't get it.

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I mean, I don't even feel like I got it until I had you don't know what it's like until you do it.

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We don't talk about it a lot.

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We all talk about it.

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Yeah, we're all talking about it.

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Oh, this is what it's like.

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Yeah, unless you're looking for that information.

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It's not like you know, you don't get a pamphlet in the mail.

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It's like this is what it's like when somebody has given birth.

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Be sure to talk about this Exactly.

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No, handbook no.

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So you said, you said you had an induction, right, mm-hmm.

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So then do you remember how long did that take and what all you went through?

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Yeah, so we came in versus.

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We were there at five and we arrived, you know, a little early and we're in the waiting room for a while.

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And then we went back and they did they put a balloon in my cervix and I forget what that's called.

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There's lots of different kinds.

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Oh, okay, there's like a cook's catheter.

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There's a fully catheter.

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There's a fully balloon.

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Just different brands, and so that was.

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I remember that was supposed to sort of cause cramping, like some feelings of cramping.

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Well, in my case it caused a lot more pain than that.

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I ended up throwing up from the pain actually, which I don't really do that, so it was a little bit alarming, although it was bonding for my husband and me in a way, because he was having that.

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We would make jokes afterward about how I had to go to the bathroom and then I started throwing up at the same time and he was just like having to clean up around me.

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So it was like trying to figure out where to put which hole.

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Yeah, exactly, so it was like bonding in a way, because he's like I don't know.

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And then just some of the classic they almost felt stereotypical kind of couple birth stories where I'm like begging him to give me food and he's like I'm not, I was told not to and I'm like just stick me some crackers because I just was so hungry.

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But anyway, the.

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I don't even remember.

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I think they gave me pain medicine.

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After that I had an epidural I and then they started the pitocin and the rest of I mean, the worst part was that, that moment in the morning.

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And then it was a pretty.

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I slept through a lot of laboring because of the epidural and would just doze, would chat with my mom and sister and Lucas, and so it was essentially that for most of the day we ended up starting to push around seven PM, so he'd gotten there around five and then pushed around seven, about 14 hours I guess, and and my son was born around eight PM, so it was or seven, 40, I think.

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And then the family came in to see him and we had tacos.

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I immediately was like someone nice tacos from across the street.

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Yeah, yeah, I think that New York experience is all right.

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You see that right there, that, like you look at the one you're like I want that, go there and get me a burrito bowl, yeah Right.

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Yeah, that's, we had Wendy's next door when I delivered and it was not that that's special, but we had an employee discount there.

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Yeah, and in my husband the badge and they remembered me because I'd been coming in every time I had my ultrasounds and scanning and they're like she delivered it.

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She was like so excited.

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They said they sent a bunch of junior bacon cheese burgers for the staff and everything, so that is like an only in New York story, you know where you're just like go to that little place, that's.

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You know, wendy's isn't a little place, it's a franchise.

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But whatever you know, the place next door and you know, get your get your food.

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Yeah, I love that.

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Well, that's great, I think.

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As far as the balloon goes, I feel like it's either fine or just turns into a medieval torture device.

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It just kind of depends.

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And I think my theory and this is not scientifically proven because I don't, I don't know that you can is that I feel like everybody's cervical innervation is different.

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Some people have a very sensitive cervix, while others that there's not a lot going on there.

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And I think that when you're putting like that tension and pressure and stretching the cervix, for some people it can just be really intense.

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But also what you're doing is releasing hormones, because inside the cervix you know as your baby's head will push on it, there's more hormones released that help trigger the labor process, and I think that process is something that makes people have that physiologic reaction of vomiting, because it's really common to have someone vomit when their baby is super low in the pelvis.

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And I just wonder if that's part of the process of the cervical balloon, because you're kind of mimicking that pressure of the baby's head before the baby's head is like down there.

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That's really interesting.

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I mean, that's just my experience, so I don't know that there's data on that.

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That's just something that I've observed in the theories that I have from observing that.

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But it is pretty common for women to have some sort of physiological response to the mechanical dilation of the cervical balloon, and then just as common for them to not really have any response whatsoever.

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And so I'm like why did I caught him here?

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There's definitely something going on.

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Yeah, why the?

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variation.

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I just remembered a kind of beautiful moment that I left out.

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Can I share that?

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Oh, yeah, go ahead.

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So when he came out, he wasn't thriving I forget all the words you don't People like me do.

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He was not thriving.

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So they did the thing where they kind of they just kind of rushed away with him to make sure he was breathing and stuff, so I hadn't held him or anything yet, and my OB, who I had seen throughout my pregnancy, did deliver me because we had scheduled the induction.

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It worked out that way.

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And I was really glad because I really liked her.

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But this moment in particular I've thought about a lot since then and it's really special to me and I didn't realize in the moment how much I would come to really appreciate it.

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But as she was sewing me up and I still hadn't had even seen my son yet, I hadn't even seen his face, it's just crazy to think about.

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This happened before I had even ever seen his face.

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But she quoted to me Khalil Gabran, who has a poem on children, and the line she quoted to me were your children do not belong to you.

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And I forget the exact next line, but the spirit of it, which is what I always think about, is like your children are on loan to you and they actually belong to the universe and like you are just, they're just in your care for a period of time and it's so in the moment.

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You know, I'm just like in this stupor or whatever.

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And so I remember thinking, oh, that's lovely, but not fully registering.

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And then of course they hand me my son and I'm just like in love and I'm holding him and things from there were full of activity.

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But then later I went back to that moment and I looked up the poem and read this little poem and I thought about it so many times since and how profound that was for me in terms of thinking about myself as a parent and what my responsibility is and how I don't own this person.

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Yes, I created this person physically, but I just love that idea that, like, our children are all alone to us and when I've told people that particular part of my birth story, they're like wow, that was like really a gift, that was really an offering that she took the time to do that in that moment and I'm just so appreciative of it.

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Yeah, that's really.

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That's a really nice thing to do, when someone's just kind of sitting there unsure of what's going on.

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And would have been worried.

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I don't know if she was doing it to distract me or not, but if she was, I appreciate it, because I think if we hadn't been talking, I would have been like where is he?

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Why is what's going on?

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Why?

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Is someone and instead I just was kind of paying attention to.

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I'm like she's talking to me, I should listen to what she's saying, and then he was there, you know.

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so yeah, yeah, that's really interesting.

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I had a similar.

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My daughter had a similar response to birth, just didn't respond.

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My husband was the one talking to me.

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He's over there and he's, like you know, just telling me what's going on.

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And then suddenly I heard her cry and he said, and I could see, and I think either he told me or I saw her little hand come up and then heard the cry, like she just suddenly was like, you know, the life was breathe back into her and she didn't need a lot of resuscitation.

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It was just she was stunned in that moment.

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You know, and I'm not sure if that's similar to what happened with you, sometimes they just don't breathe right away and they're just kind of like, yeah, so at that I mean it's, it's scary and having that distraction which my husband is always a distraction, he's always talking, yeah.

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And to have something like that.

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I think is real important.

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I really do too, and I don't.

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This is one of those moments where I am grateful and retrospect of what I did not know, because I didn't know until later that he wasn't thriving.

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I just assumed this is what they do.

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They must be just wiping him off.

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I don't think I assumed anything was wrong but, like you said, it's so fuzzy that it you're kind of like I don't really remember what I was thinking.

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I might not have been thinking anything because you're stunned, right yeah.

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And even with medical background, it's fuzzy.

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I didn't know a lot when I delivered my first, because I was a postpartum nurse, which I totally remember, those double rooms, that's oh my gosh, did you you?

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worked in the double room.

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Because I worked there?

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No, I didn't.

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I called them when I went into labor and I was like my room, oh, you knew, you knew.

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Yeah, I was like no way.

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And then I just remember it was just the difference between the two birth experiences having worked in postpartum and then working in labor and delivery was completely different and understanding what was going on.

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But they're still fuzzy.

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There's still parts that are fuzzy because there's just so much going on and it's so emotional.

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Yeah, it overwhelms your brain.

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I actually, now that we're talking about it and I'm going back, I do.

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I remember watching my husband's face to see because I couldn't see the baby, but I could see him.

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I could see my husband's face who was watching and, like your husband talking through it Lucas wasn't talking through it but his face looked calm.

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So I remember being like, okay, well, he doesn't look alarmed.

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So I'm going to take that as a good sign.

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I assumed if things were bad it would have shown on his face.

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Well, it sounds like it all happened in under five minutes, and that's when we do the Apgar scores.

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So those are the like.

00:18:07.201 --> 00:18:15.128
The first one maybe wasn't as high as expected, and then maybe the second one, by the five minute period, was fine.

00:18:15.128 --> 00:18:19.215
So or sometimes you know that first minute that can seem like forever.

00:18:19.215 --> 00:18:22.468
Yeah, it might have been one minute so who knows how long it might have been one minute.

00:18:22.960 --> 00:18:25.269
Because sometimes they don't respond immediately.

00:18:25.269 --> 00:18:37.574
They kind of look alarm, alarming, like their physique is alarming, and so you know, then they just take him to the warmer to do a couple of things and make sure, just so that they can have everything there to resuscitate if necessary.

00:18:37.574 --> 00:18:40.648
And then oh baby is like oh, wait a minute, what are you doing to me?

00:18:40.648 --> 00:18:41.805
And then you know I'm good.

00:18:41.805 --> 00:18:49.113
So yeah, I don't know if they debriefed you on what happened, but just guessing, those are some possibilities.

00:18:49.500 --> 00:18:56.853
They were pretty vague, I remember it might have been that, just because I remember them being like yeah, at first it was like wasn't breathing, but now we're good.

00:18:56.853 --> 00:18:58.244
So it was like oh OK.

00:18:58.244 --> 00:19:03.407
Like basically it was like now we're good, like OK, I'm just going to assume things are fine now.

00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:16.067
And there's been kind of an evolution and I just remember New York being real procedure oriented in the hospitals versus some of the places that I'm working here they're trying to really be a little bit more.

00:19:16.067 --> 00:19:19.750
I mean, I work with midwives now and they try to be a little bit more holistic.

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:21.968
But you know, just space is such an issue in New York.

00:19:21.968 --> 00:19:22.963
They just want to get things done.

00:19:22.963 --> 00:19:43.732
So I think at the time if I remember so, my daughter was born in 2015, there wasn't as much emphasis on things like skin to skin and the golden hour, and maybe in that three year period things changed, because I know that by 2018, when I was here, we did it a little bit differently, but still there's been an evolution.

00:19:43.993 --> 00:19:44.294
Yeah.

00:19:44.799 --> 00:19:56.305
I just remember there was so much more like put the baby on the warmer, do all the things, then give the baby to mom, then have the baby go get a bath and all that stuff when I was in New York versus here.

00:19:56.700 --> 00:20:01.249
So we did promptly do skin to skin and then my husband also did skin to skin.

00:20:01.249 --> 00:20:02.913
Oh nice, yeah.

00:20:02.913 --> 00:20:03.820
So we.

00:20:03.820 --> 00:20:06.570
Once he was okay and breathing.

00:20:06.570 --> 00:20:12.008
I remember him being with us for what felt like quite a while, like through the tacos and everything.

00:20:12.880 --> 00:20:13.461
Through the tacos.

00:20:13.461 --> 00:20:16.890
Yeah, good, so you weren't really separated.

00:20:16.890 --> 00:20:18.923
Did you get separated before you went to postpartum?

00:20:19.204 --> 00:20:19.665
I did?

00:20:19.665 --> 00:20:20.428
Yeah, I did.

00:20:20.428 --> 00:20:34.325
But it was like it felt like after, like, my dad had showed up with the tacos, my parents had held him, my sister had held him, we had done skin to skin, lucas did skin to skin, and then at some point it was like, okay, we're going to take him and then you're going to go, and it was like okay.

00:20:34.325 --> 00:20:41.147
So I don't even, like we said, I think they feel like time warps in this situation, but it's like, was that 30 minutes or an hour?

00:20:41.147 --> 00:20:42.590
Probably not an hour.

00:20:42.590 --> 00:20:46.088
I don't think they gave us the full hour, but it was probably like 30, 40 minutes.

00:20:46.410 --> 00:20:53.045
It could have been and it just depending on the day and the load of babies in the nursery, that had just been more they may have waited.

00:20:53.045 --> 00:20:55.769
Because you only have a couple nurses doing all that stuff.

00:20:55.769 --> 00:20:58.147
So if they're backed up they probably wouldn't have taken your baby.

00:20:58.147 --> 00:21:00.627
So then afterwards you went home.

00:21:00.627 --> 00:21:04.770
We already talked about how your hospital stay wasn't exactly what you're hoping for.

00:21:04.770 --> 00:21:05.964
So what was that transition like?

00:21:06.005 --> 00:21:06.205
for you.

00:21:06.205 --> 00:21:10.368
So I was terrified we were going to break him, you know, because he's so little.

00:21:10.368 --> 00:21:17.239
So we did spend a stupid amount of money I think it cost over $100.

00:21:17.239 --> 00:21:23.846
But like I got some car service that I didn't want to take him home in a regular cab, I was like, absolutely not, we can't do it.

00:21:23.846 --> 00:21:24.942
Like we need some.

00:21:24.942 --> 00:21:34.829
So I booked some fancy car service that's specialized in taking babies home from the hospital with their parents, and since we had to go all the way from Manhattan to Queens, it was really expensive.

00:21:34.829 --> 00:21:40.250
But whatever money well spent, because it relaxed me that it was this like massive SUV.

00:21:40.250 --> 00:21:43.868
We had our own little infant car seat, but I didn't even know.

00:21:43.868 --> 00:21:45.826
I remember the driver showing us how to.

00:21:45.826 --> 00:21:48.285
We didn't know how to work it, so the driver's like do that.

00:21:48.285 --> 00:21:53.867
So we went home and I, my gosh, the breastfeeding was a thing.

00:21:53.867 --> 00:21:55.692
It was a thing for me it was real hard.

00:21:56.099 --> 00:21:57.124
It was in the hospital.

00:21:57.124 --> 00:21:58.188
It wasn't really working.

00:21:58.188 --> 00:22:08.670
We had a lactation consultant come and put on the, this little thing that assists the baby I forget what that's called, but it looks sort of like a shield, a nipple shield.

00:22:08.670 --> 00:22:10.643
So that was helping.

00:22:10.643 --> 00:22:17.747
But he was not getting quite enough food in the hospital so we did have to supplement with formula.

00:22:17.747 --> 00:22:24.403
So when I got home I was so terrified I was very pulled.

00:22:24.403 --> 00:22:30.630
I was pulled in different directions on one hand, like obviously what mattered to me was that he had enough nutrients.

00:22:30.630 --> 00:22:41.631
On the other, I really wanted to breastfeed and I felt like, since he was kind of breastfeeding, there had to be a way that we could make it fully work and not just partially work.

00:22:41.631 --> 00:22:46.911
And the lactation consultant at the hospital had sort of whispered to me like he has a tongue tie.

00:22:46.911 --> 00:22:49.567
I was like I'm gonna nerves unless you clip that tongue tie.

00:22:49.567 --> 00:22:50.984
I'm like why is she whispering?

00:22:51.779 --> 00:22:55.087
She was like it's controversial, for I don't even know why.

00:22:55.087 --> 00:22:56.451
I don't know why they're controversial.

00:22:57.441 --> 00:23:01.686
She goes, you have to go to Long Island, Literally like whispering to me and write down this name.

00:23:01.686 --> 00:23:03.279
She's like they only do this in Long Island.

00:23:03.279 --> 00:23:04.965
I'm like what do they only do in Long Island?

00:23:04.965 --> 00:23:06.882
Why did it feel?

00:23:06.882 --> 00:23:13.546
It felt, yeah, it felt like weirdly secretive and I didn't understand why it was a secret.

00:23:13.546 --> 00:23:17.971
So I ended up we went home, still not nursing enough.

00:23:17.971 --> 00:23:20.326
I ordered the scale where you could measure it.

00:23:20.727 --> 00:23:28.684
put the baby on it to see how many ounces of food he had gotten, because they're so little that if they ate more ounces you could actually see that change in weight.

00:23:28.684 --> 00:23:30.926
So I'm like he's not getting enough food.

00:23:30.926 --> 00:23:34.770
So we booked the man in Long Island who does the time tie surgery.

00:23:34.770 --> 00:23:37.384
We booked the man in Long Island and rented a car.

00:23:39.080 --> 00:23:43.871
And by this point he's like a week or two old and I've been trying, he's not with that.

00:23:43.871 --> 00:23:50.968
We have the nipple shield, my nipples were bleeding and all that, but I just really wanted it to work and so we went out there and he clipped the tongue.

00:23:50.968 --> 00:23:56.027
I faced the other direction, I was sobbing, I couldn't handle it.

00:23:56.027 --> 00:23:58.689
I couldn't believe we were doing surgery on the week old baby.

00:23:58.689 --> 00:24:00.886
I felt really guilty about it.

00:24:00.886 --> 00:24:06.311
And then, but immediately after, he did start nursing without the nipple shield.

00:24:06.311 --> 00:24:08.807
So it was like oh, oh, my gosh, oh my gosh.

00:24:08.807 --> 00:24:09.509
It was so happy.

00:24:09.509 --> 00:24:10.701
And then I ended up.

00:24:10.801 --> 00:24:12.828
I breastfed for four months.

00:24:12.828 --> 00:24:16.349
We pretty much that whole time, supplemented with formula.

00:24:16.349 --> 00:24:34.086
There was a very short period of time where he was actually getting enough, but we did kind of both the whole time, which I, in retrospect, I feel like if I had ended up having a second child, I would have been much more open to that, because it really did help with taking turns at night.

00:24:34.086 --> 00:24:38.250
I didn't have to necessarily have pumped as much as Finn would need.

00:24:38.250 --> 00:24:41.409
This could give him formula at night and I could actually get some sleep.

00:24:41.409 --> 00:24:48.464
So that was really helpful and that's ultimately why I ended up stopping breastfeeding because it was like I'm just going to need more sleep than this.

00:24:48.464 --> 00:24:59.884
The waking up and by that point he was sleeping a lot more, so it was much more like I was getting up to pump, or because my breasts were hurting and it was like I think I'm done with that.

00:24:59.884 --> 00:25:03.103
So I stopped and that was pretty.

00:25:03.103 --> 00:25:04.448
That was a good choice.

00:25:04.448 --> 00:25:09.740
I remember feeling like I think I made the right choice for me to stop at four months.

00:25:10.121 --> 00:25:11.203
Well, if he's sleeping through the night.

00:25:11.203 --> 00:25:17.904
And I think it's all so individual because both my kids were so different and everybody has to, just kind of factor in what's working for them to decide.

00:25:17.904 --> 00:25:20.645
I mean, just because it's not working, yeah exactly.

00:25:20.645 --> 00:25:22.411
That's what's important.

00:25:22.431 --> 00:25:30.510
Yeah, and in retrospect I look back on that and it's like what, that sort of obsession with breastfeeding I don't really know how to unpack where that was coming from.

00:25:30.510 --> 00:25:32.246
Was it cultural pressure?

00:25:32.246 --> 00:25:34.727
Why was I putting that pressure on myself?

00:25:34.727 --> 00:25:41.148
And I mean, I don't know, and I think probably it was cultural pressure.

00:25:41.148 --> 00:25:44.288
It was just this assumption of it's better to breastfeed.

00:25:44.288 --> 00:25:45.443
So I have to do that.

00:25:45.443 --> 00:25:55.800
Of course I have to do that and I think it was not that it's their fault at all, but it was unintentionally exacerbated by the.

00:25:55.942 --> 00:25:59.832
I ended up hiring two more lactation consultants who came to our house afterward.

00:25:59.832 --> 00:26:05.782
My insurance covered one and then when that didn't really help, I like paid out of pocket for the other one.

00:26:05.782 --> 00:26:08.525
It was someone everyone recommended and so these people would come.

00:26:08.525 --> 00:26:14.152
So in total I saw three lactation consultants and because it's their job, I get it.

00:26:14.152 --> 00:26:18.411
They want you to breastfeed more than anything because that's their job, right.

00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:24.051
But I remember at one point my mom one of the lactation consultants was in our apartment.

00:26:24.051 --> 00:26:27.669
We lived in this, you know, new York, so small apartment in Queens.

00:26:27.669 --> 00:26:41.893
So my mom was kind of trying to give me personal space with this lactation consultant, but she could hear everything even from the other room and my mom was sending me these texts that were basically like you know, fed is best.

00:26:41.893 --> 00:26:42.803
Essentially, she's like.

00:26:42.803 --> 00:26:44.769
She's like you don't have to do anything.

00:26:44.769 --> 00:26:47.808
This woman is saying this woman is obsessed with you breastfeeding.

00:26:47.808 --> 00:26:50.166
It's okay if you don't want to do any of this.

00:26:50.480 --> 00:26:58.345
I remember really appreciating it at the time but also being like, okay, mom, like I can't read these texts and work with this woman at the same time, but it was so well-meaning.

00:26:58.779 --> 00:27:02.130
It was my mom basically being like I think she was just worried about me.

00:27:02.130 --> 00:27:06.909
She's like you don't have to do this, like if it's not working, you can let this go.

00:27:06.909 --> 00:27:16.916
I think it ended up sort of snowballing because I think once you at least for me once I committed to being on the breastfeeding wagon and I'm like I want to nurse.

00:27:16.916 --> 00:27:24.909
Then there are people there whose intention is to help you and they do help you, but they're all in also on like making that work.

00:27:24.909 --> 00:27:32.444
So everybody ends up having this very single focus on nursing at all costs and it can get a little bit out of control.

00:27:32.444 --> 00:27:43.509
I think in my case it did get a little bit out of control, and by out of control I mean just like a little bit obsessive seeing all the specialists charting like how much formula has he had versus breast milk?

00:27:43.509 --> 00:27:45.933
I need him to have more breast milk tomorrow than he did today.

00:27:46.035 --> 00:27:55.786
Just like getting a little bit obsessive in a way that probably this wasn't necessary, right, yeah, so what do you truly, in your core, want to do?

00:27:55.786 --> 00:28:03.027
If that's the kind of a dedication, because it's always, it's a challenge, there's going to be a challenge there, right?

00:28:03.027 --> 00:28:05.886
It's not the easiest form of feeding.

00:28:05.988 --> 00:28:09.008
So it is most of the time You'd say a lot of the time it's hard.

00:28:09.990 --> 00:28:25.814
Most of the time there is some sort of challenge because we aren't, I think, because we don't live in the village the proverbial village anymore, right, we're not watching our sisters and mothers and aunties and everybody breastfeed like it's a normal thing.

00:28:25.814 --> 00:28:29.477
We don't do that on the day-to-day basis.

00:28:29.477 --> 00:28:37.436
Right, we all have to overcome the learning hurdle, and for some it's easier than others, but I feel like there's always a challenge.

00:28:37.436 --> 00:28:42.181
Every single mom that I help breastfeed for the first time is like what am I doing?

00:28:42.181 --> 00:28:44.577
And neither does the baby, because the baby has to learn as well.

00:28:44.577 --> 00:28:48.057
So there's always going to be a challenge to overcome the breastfeeding hurdle.

00:28:49.690 --> 00:28:55.737
And for you there are additional challenges because of the tongue tie and then the imbalance between supply and demand.

00:28:55.737 --> 00:29:01.642
And so if that's what you truly want, if that's where you want to focus your energy, that's fine.

00:29:01.642 --> 00:29:21.880
If it's not working out absolutely, I think everybody needs to find that balance and I think everybody needs to feel empowered to find what works for them and just utilize the resources with an open mind, which is so hard when you're hormonal and you have this tiny human that you're trying to do the best.

00:29:21.880 --> 00:29:24.017
They say breast is best.

00:29:24.017 --> 00:29:30.201
They say that right, but what that means is nutritionally, that is what is created for your baby.

00:29:30.201 --> 00:29:32.609
It's considered to be nutritionally perfect.

00:29:33.152 --> 00:29:48.739
Air quotes right, we are trying to mimic that air quote perfection with formula, and even formula companies will say we haven't gotten there, but we are feeding our baby, we are giving the best nutrition that is available.

00:29:49.450 --> 00:30:12.519
Babies have been getting some sort of supplementation since the beginning of time, otherwise they would not have survived right, whether it was barley water, which is apparently what my mom got as a kid or something like that before there was formula, whether it's a wet nurse, because there's people that were just professional breast feeders Professional is probably a bad word, I think most of the time they were, it was either slavery or indentured servitude.

00:30:13.349 --> 00:30:28.358
But from the beginning of time there's been some sort of supplementation for the actual mother's milk, and so to think that we are failing as mothers because we have utilized supplementation is, I think, not fair and being able to utilize our resources.

00:30:28.358 --> 00:30:38.518
I don't know a whole lot about it, but I know that there are donor milk companies and I know hospitals will have donor milk for babies in the NICU and there's just there's so many options out there.

00:30:38.518 --> 00:30:40.856
If it's your passion, yes, breast feed absolutely.

00:30:40.856 --> 00:30:45.015
You know I utilize my resources to be able to overcome those hurdles.

00:30:45.015 --> 00:30:49.221
It was frustrating but I was glad I did it and I tried not to be too obsessive and it was just.

00:30:49.221 --> 00:30:51.834
It was hard work for the first year or so when I was doing it.

00:30:52.329 --> 00:31:03.579
But I don't think any less of people that choose formula, because you have to have your sanity, you have to be a mother to your child and you have to be a human being and you have to make life work.

00:31:03.579 --> 00:31:08.921
So I love that you're able to have zoomed out and look and said you know?

00:31:08.961 --> 00:31:09.781
this isn't the best.

00:31:09.781 --> 00:31:12.718
I need to be a human and found a solution.

00:31:12.718 --> 00:31:34.769
That's what we need to do as mothers we need to zoom out, look at the whole situation in general during this whole time that we, our children, are on loan to us, as you mentioned, and decide what works for the family and what works best for everyone, and try to work with that, because the time breastfeeding is one of those big hurdles and deciding how to feed your baby is like one of those first hurdles that you have to decide how you're going to handle.

00:31:34.809 --> 00:31:36.215
I love that, the way you put that.

00:31:36.609 --> 00:31:39.880
I feel like we really overcomplicate it and I'm guilty of it.

00:31:39.880 --> 00:31:45.817
You know we want what's best for our kids, but at the end of the day, we have to also think about what's best for everyone that's involved.

00:31:45.817 --> 00:31:57.200
So then you were doing all the tutoring and writing and all that stuff, while trying to overcome this hurdle and figuring out what's best for you and baby.

00:31:57.200 --> 00:31:59.294
How was the transition from?

00:31:59.294 --> 00:32:01.140
I don't know if you did you have maternity leave.

00:32:01.140 --> 00:32:03.357
It sounds like you did in the penitent.

00:32:03.750 --> 00:32:11.660
So this was really interesting because this part actually forms the basis of everything of what I do now, which is teaching people to write their books.

00:32:11.660 --> 00:32:15.998
So my first novel I wrote, the one that you've listened to.

00:32:15.998 --> 00:32:18.222
I wrote that one over about six years.

00:32:18.222 --> 00:32:23.998
I wasn't for most of that I was dating but like I wasn't married, I wasn't with my husband, I didn't have a kid.

00:32:23.998 --> 00:32:25.019
A lot of it I was single.

00:32:25.019 --> 00:32:25.721
So I don't know.

00:32:25.721 --> 00:32:26.541
I had a lot of time.

00:32:26.541 --> 00:32:30.979
I was married at night so I would spend hours a day working on this book.

00:32:30.979 --> 00:32:32.252
The luxury of that.

00:32:32.252 --> 00:32:39.338
I didn't think of it as a luxury at the time, but I had the luxury of time and the way that traditional publishing works for fiction is.

00:32:39.338 --> 00:32:43.700
Once you've sold your first novel, you have the option of selling subsequent novels on a proposal.

00:32:43.700 --> 00:32:50.638
So you basically just send in a description of it and maybe a sample chapter or two and your editor may just buy it before you've even written it.

00:32:51.089 --> 00:33:06.055
So when I had seen the year before I had accepted a full-time position for the first time in many years at the tutoring company where I worked, so that we could have health benefits, so that I could have a baby and fortunately it had.

00:33:06.055 --> 00:33:07.619
Like I said, we got pregnant pretty fast.

00:33:07.619 --> 00:33:08.974
The timing worked out really well.

00:33:08.974 --> 00:33:28.759
I qualified for a maternity leave, I went on the parental leave and it was, I think, 11 weeks or like eight weeks paid, but then like four more weeks if I needed it, but essentially like, oh, I could have up to 11 or 12 weeks and my husband was in full-time school, so it was also really helpful for paying our bills.

00:33:28.759 --> 00:33:41.655
Well, the night that Finn was born, literally I was in my hospital bed the next morning and I opened my emails and my second novel, privilege, had sold, but on a proposal, so meaning I had to write it.

00:33:41.655 --> 00:33:49.375
So I basically had a book, contract and money, which was great given we had just had a baby, but I had to actually write the book.

00:33:49.849 --> 00:34:10.300
And so I remember deciding okay, I'm going to give myself four weeks just to be a mom of a newborn baby and like, figure that out, and then I will spend the next eight weeks writing this book because I have to go back to work and this full-time job and I was not going to have a full-time job in a newborn and write a book.

00:34:10.300 --> 00:34:14.961
I know I can juggle a lot of things, but that's like too many things for a person.

00:34:14.961 --> 00:34:16.715
So I'm like this will be great.

00:34:16.715 --> 00:34:20.237
I'm going to have four weeks and then I'm going to spend the next eight weeks writing the draft.

00:34:21.210 --> 00:34:25.081
Of course I knew I would need to revise, but I've always kind of enjoyed revision.

00:34:25.081 --> 00:34:31.036
I'm like I can manage revision while I'm back at work, but I don't know that I can generate the whole novel while I'm at work.

00:34:31.036 --> 00:34:55.556
So I did that and this time the thing that I really love about how the timing worked out is that it really it forced me to come up with a process for writing a novel, because I had to write it in a couple of hours a day when either my mom, my husband or my friend who I hired could watch Finn and I was still nursing at that point.

00:34:55.556 --> 00:35:02.603
Because I nursed until it was four months, I couldn't be gone for very long or I would need to pump or nurse and I didn't realize that.

00:35:02.603 --> 00:35:11.079
So if people don't realize this, probably if they're listening they probably do, but when you're nursing it's really you only have like three hours two to three hours.

00:35:11.099 --> 00:35:13.523
Two to three hours yes, you have to do something.

00:35:13.742 --> 00:35:15.757
Yeah, it's fast man.

00:35:15.757 --> 00:35:18.235
I remember we went out my birthday.

00:35:18.235 --> 00:35:21.112
Finn was born April 3rd and my birthday is April 30th.

00:35:21.112 --> 00:35:23.958
So on my birthday, lucas and I went out.

00:35:23.958 --> 00:35:27.579
He's like I'm going to take you shopping, we'll get you a dress and we'll go to dinner.

00:35:27.579 --> 00:35:31.976
Lovely idea, but two hours in it sounds like a lot in New York.

00:35:31.996 --> 00:35:38.659
It is Two hours in, I'm like my boobs are exploding and I didn't know that yet because I had just hadn't tried that.

00:35:38.659 --> 00:35:53.063
So I went into a CVS and got a manual pump for like $19 and we went to Rosa Mexicana, which is our favorite Mexican restaurant, and I just like went to the bathroom and just manually pumped my boobs just so I could have dinner.

00:35:53.063 --> 00:35:57.356
I mean not even to save the milk, it was just like I just can't sit here because it hurts.

00:35:57.516 --> 00:36:11.753
Right, I mean it starts to hurt, given the nursing situation and then also just childcare, I just I would have these sort of like two hours every day tops where I could, and I was like I have to do this, I have to write in two hours a day and eight weeks I have to write a novel.

00:36:11.753 --> 00:36:13.255
So how do I do this?

00:36:13.255 --> 00:36:25.829

Mary Adkins: Weaving the Tapestry of Motherhood with Writing and Resilience

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